Somehow, I always knew while growing up, that I was different from other kids. I just didn't understand why I was different. I grew up in a total dysfunctional home with alcohol abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse and just a lot of pain all around me. We didn't have a lot of money growing up and my father was an alcoholic who drank away what little money we did have. He also physically abused my mother for years. My siblings and I watched our father beat our mother both physically and emotionally. We lived in and watched this abuse for most of our lives into adulthood.
​
I find it amazing how people learn different things from situations like this. Growing up I had many friends that grew up in a loving environment, one of which was my best friend whose family I spent a lot of time with, so I quickly learned that this was not the norm and the environment that I lived in was not ok. Because of the families that I saw on a daily basis, I learned kindness, compassion, and optimism. My sister and brother were not as lucky as I was. They didn’t have the opportunity to see and watch loving families and they learned fear and pessimism. Don’t get me wrong, I lived in fear, but I still found a way to find the glass half full.
​
Yet I also knew that being raised in my dysfunctional family was not why I always felt very different than all of my friends. Later in life, I learned that I felt different because I could "feel" people's emotions and I could feel their pain like it was my own. This happened often with my mother. I could feel her pain, both emotionally and physically. Sometimes I even "knew" things that as a child, I had truly no business of knowing. Or I would even know the answers to things that I knew was information that I never learned. I often would "hear" warnings also. This is was scared me the most. I truly thought I was crazy. I often knew when I needed to get home or when my father would be coming home and how the night was going to go. I never understood why I would feel or know things for no apparent reason, or why I just felt different. It took me years until I could sort all of this out; approximately 39 years.
​
​ When I was a child "feeling" like this, I never quite understand why, so I was constantly wondering what was wrong with me. Then, again, later in life and after much counseling, I realized there's nothing wrong with me. I realized that I am an empath. Being an empath can be construed as a gift, or a curse depending upon how you looked at it. My feeling on this gift or curse truly depended on the day when I was growing up. But I also knew that there had to be a reason for this, so later in life, for many years I read all I could on the subject just trying to sort it out, find out more, figure out the why and find out what my purpose in life was.
​
In college, I was drawn to psychology in an effort to figure out the human psyche, mainly because of my family. In my young adult years, I was drawn to help kids that may have grown up in dysfunction like me. As an adult in life, I’m drawn to simply helping people overall. It took me many years to figure much of this out and if I can help people get through there challenges quicker than I did, that’s a win.
​
While growing up, I was always the person that everyone would open up to and share their problems with. I found myself sad so very often and it was always when someone near me was sad, or upset when someone near was upset, and anxious when someone near was anxious. I cannot even begin to describe what a roller coaster this was until I figured out that these were not my feelings at all. This came about after being diagnosed with cancer at the age of 37 and growing from young adulthood to my late 30's with my husband.
The great love affair that I had with my husband as a young girl, was that he lived in a very similar dysfunction of his own while growing up so he "got" me. And we helped each other through things that most people just didn't understand and couldn't even fathom going through. He was my rock. As an empath, he was also my rocky road. As we grew, it was difficult growing with him. I learned optimism in the dysfunction I grew up in, but he learned anger. As an empath and not know that I was an empath, I had such a difficult time with his anger because, I didn't know what to do with the feelings I was having, not knowing that they weren't my feelings at all. Whew, what a ride that was. We were toxic for so many years and it wasn't until I realized that his emotions, not my own, are what I was feeling most of the time. After the cancer diagnosis, learning different things from my healer, and research (so much research), I realized that I had to now learn to always distinguish my feelings from someone else's that was near me. This was so very difficult for me because I would forget, but I had to learn to make this second nature. It took me well into my 40’s for this to become routine, and I sometimes still forget.
For many years I’ve was drawn to the spirit world, angels, and healing. And when I wasn't well and nothing was working, I turned to Reiki. Reiki was a Godsend and this is how I’ve come to becoming a Certified Medical Reiki Master in my life now. Reiki has changed my life in so many ways and now I’m able to help people emotionally, physically and spiritually simply with Reiki, my empathic person as well as through my intuition. After so many struggles, much research, healing physically, emotionally and spiritually, I realize that it was my destiny to bring light to people that need to find the light. And I do this with all of the things I now call gifts. If any of this resonates with you and you're needing help figuring things out, please reach out to me. I'm happy to help!
​
Love and light to you!
​